Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Banking and Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

It does have the power to regulate self-managed superannuation funds within the various acts, but it has not bothered to check yet, Senator Watson. That is my point. I do not suggest that the tax office is solely responsible. There is a very wide-ranging debate about this in respect of ASIC and what it did or did not do and whether there is power with respect to promissory notes. There are legitimate criticisms about financial planners and the commissions that were being charged in some cases. There are a whole range of issues. But in the context of the schedule that we are dealing with in this piece of legislation—which rightly, in Labor’s view, imposes sanctions against promoters of these tax schemes rather than placing all of the responsibility on the victims of them—I made a passing comment about what I think was a reasonable critique of the tax office in respect of self-managed super funds and the Westpoint financial scandal.

The amendment we are considering, as I outlined in my speech in the second reading debate, brings the tax act in line, quite precisely in its wording, with the provisions that we have in respect of bribery in this country.